


underneath the water

by falling_awake



Series: PacRim AU [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen, i really couldn't resist writing this, not actually happy but i guess it kind of is in the end????, one day i will get over my love of AUs, send help guys, that day is not today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falling_awake/pseuds/falling_awake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drifting is like nothing you've ever felt before. It's like filling all the empty spaces in your mind with someone else and becoming one person rather that two. It's no surprise then, that losing your partner feels like losing half of yourself, and even less of a surprise that nobody can ever quite fill that space.</p>
<p>Sometimes Kili wishes it wouldn't take a crisis to drift with Merry, but there's only so much two people can handle. And compatibility only goes so far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	underneath the water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caddock (laureate)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laureate/gifts).
  * Inspired by [High in the sunlit silence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/905930) by [Caddock (laureate)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laureate/pseuds/Caddock). 



> For my ever lovely Merry, who delights in being a terrible person with me and is also a terrible enabler. This is for you, boo.

_Miles and miles in my bare feet_  
 _Still can't lay me down to sleep_  
 _If I die before I wake_  
 _I know the Lord my soul won't take_

\- The Civil Wars, _Barton Hollow_

The first time he Drifts with Fili it’s like everything in the world suddenly makes sense. Kili still doesn’t know half the technical terms tossed about by the enthusiasts in the science department, and half the time he forgets what he ate for breakfast, but that doesn’t matter.

They hit the bay and feel the waves against their jaeger’s body -- against their _own_ \-- and the adrenaline slips into their veins like the headiest ambrosia. Kili’s too cocky, Fili’s nearly too cautious, they almost go down into the surf and don’t get back up again.

But stubbornness is a Durin trait, and the brothers’ have it in spades. 

That night they drag themselves back to base, metal dyed Kaiju blue, and spill out of the comm-pod high off endorphins and laughing their way through their hurts.

Kili’s barely out of his teen years, limbs still too long and gangly, hair in a ragged braid down his back, and he’s already got a kill count to his name.

The pride and cockiness grows, fueled by each successful hunt and the roar of fans. They’re celebrities, the Durin brothers, like night and day and a meld nobody could have anticipated. 

It goes on, shatterdome through shatterdome, team through team and they’re _good_ , they’re _great_.

The boys grow up in the cockpit, know the span of their jaeger like the back of their hand.

They grow complacent. 

And Fili pays for it with his life.

\---

Later on, Kili remembers it all with pinpoint accuracy, remembers the exact moment the battle turned and they fell back into the surf, metal joints and bone creaking under the strain. He remembers the tail like a sword piercing right through the metal body of their jaeger, feeling it in his own gut and wondering if this was it, if they were going to die here. 

In the moment, it had been little more than static and pain and the roar of _**ohgodohgod im dying im going to die**_ , body doubling over as he choked on his own spit.

Fili had screamed his name, had pushed them to their feet, grabbed the Kaiju by a flailing arm in an attempt to hold it off. Their mind flashed with panic and pain and fear, alarms ringing in the span between them and in their ears, control’s warnings coming through too loud and too late. 

Teeth crunched through the metal of his wrist, yanked hard to pull the metal limb from it’s socket even as Kili’s foot found purchase and pushed it away. It was too late, it was too much, the coastline stretching behind them had thousands of people counting on them but even more so they had each other to worry about.

Through the red flashing lights and roar of the Kaiju they remembered their mother, remembered embracing her and hearing her words before they left that first time -- _Watch over each other, come back home_ \-- but this was no time to chase the RABIT and they struggled to their feet, voices a singular scream.

Kili sliced forward with his sword, wrist groaning and aching, and severed an arm. Fili braced them then, shouting in victory as Kili brought the blade down again and gutted the beast. The surf about them turned a vicious blue, sea churning under the death throes of a Kaiju as it sunk beneath the water. 

There was no need for words, just aching, breathless laughter, feelings and thoughts and relief slipping through the synapses they’ve melded together.

_We did it -- oh god I thought we were going to die -- filikilibrotherbrotherbrother--_ and jarrs with a screech and crunch of metal, blue claws sinking through their jaeger’s comm-pod like a hot knife through butter, sending shrapnel flying. Pain blossoms hot and dark like the seep of a tea bag in boiling water, dragged a silent scream from Kili even as Fili groaned and slumped in their harnesses, one hand trembling against the piece of long twisted metal punched straight through his gut.

Red stained the floor at their feet, Kaiju blue dripping from the walls even as the beast fell and slowly sunk, blood spreading around their legs like ink.

Kili’s voice comes back to him in a rush, rough and torn, aching even as he pulled out of the harness and rushed to his brother’s side, body aching and screaming at him.

“ _Fili_!” 

It’s a blur of too much warm blood and too cold skin, Kili screaming into the comm for them to send medics, _to get them the fuck out of here_. Fili’s hands trembling against his helmet, smearing blood even as Kili cried.

But it’s too much and the medics are too far, they’re going to have to meet them halfway. And they both know Fili won’t make it.

They had to try and so they did, Kili wrestling more of the control away in a desperate gambit that sent them both crying out with pain and loss, forced his legs -- _their legs_ \-- forward with desperate gasping breaths.

_I can't die, he can’t die, I don't want to die, Oh God **ithurtsithurtstoomuchpainNO** Oh God, He can't, Kili can't, Fili no, Don't Die, Don’t you dare die! **coldcoldNOit’ssocoldNODONTi’msosorry** Please God let me make it **can’tbreathe** Please let him live oh God why **fearNOi’mscaredNOi’msorryNONONO** I can’t do this, i love you, oh God don’t leave please, I promised, we promised, DON’T LEAVE ME, **coldpaindarknothingnothingNOTHING-**_

It was like something had been cut from him and Kili dropped in his harness as the full neural load burned into him, seizing and screaming as Fili’s warmth slipped between his fingers like sand at a beach. He was still screaming when they found him, blood running from his nose and ears and eyes, crumbled at the floor, arm stretched out as if to grab his brother and hold him there.

When he woke up weeks later it was with Fili’s name upon his tongue and a scream nearly loud enough to shatter glass as he thrashed and ripped the IV from his arm.

Kili doesn’t know why he lived, doesn’t know _how_ he lived. 

But it ruins him.

\---

They say it’s like a part of him still thinks he’s Fili, that his brother dying while they were still connected fried bits of his brain and scrambled them up. 

They’re wrong.

Kili knows Fili isn’t there, knows that when he wakes up it won’t be to a socked foot in the gut and a laugh as they wrestle and grumble and trip over themselves to get to breakfast. He’s fucked up, yeah, but Kili isn’t _dumb_ and he isn’t ruined. It’s just that after years of piloting together, of spending hours in each other’s mind and days in the tiny quarters they’d been assigned, they were more like one being that two. They’ve spent decades tossing comments over the shoulder at each other, passing salt before the other spoke up for it and just generally being attached at the hip -- so who can blame him for feeling and looking like there’s a part of him missing? Because _that_ part is true.

Sometimes Kili forgets, laughs like the bubbling up of water in a spring and turns to tell Fili something only to meet an empty space. Nobody stands at his right any more, perhaps out of reverence, perhaps simply feeling uneasy standing where Fili used to occupy as if he’s a ghost still lingering on.

But he’s not there, he’s not _anywhere_ but in a simple grave with his name carved into the stone like all he was made up of was the name -- _Fili Durinson_ \-- and little else.

Kili wants to cry every time he visits, _does_ cry, even when he goes back to the room they shared and sees his stupid posters tacked up, sees the socks that always found ways to meander into odd places.

Fili isn’t anywhere but buried six feet underground and stamped upon the fucked up mess of his mind and _it’s driving him crazy_.

\---

It shouldn’t be a surprise at just how many people want to poke around his mind, want to see how he ticks now that Fili’s been torn away and he’s lived through the trauma of it. Not many pilots outlive their partners, and less stay with the program after it all. 

He would follow those footsteps, Kili really would just leave everything behind, but he’s stubborn to a fault and there’s something like horror beneath his breast at the thought of his beloved _Mithril True_ being decommissioned or fixed up and reused for some green pilots to get themselves killed in.

So Kili stays, back straight and head held high not out of surety but out of a warped sense of pride and stubbornness. Fili had told him to live, and that is what he will do -- even if he no longer knows how to be that person he was before. 

Even months later there’s a soft berth about him, people unsure how to tread around a solo pilot and in some vicious way he enjoys that. There’s a silence, a quiet that lets the jagged scars and lines in his mind to ebb and grow, edged with fury and self pity and maybe that’s why he accepts when the Marshall asks his help to train the prospective pilots. There’s nothing like the burn of muscles and the satisfaction of beating an opponent down.

Kili lives like that for months, going through daily motions in a blur that ebss only when there’s adrenaline in his veins and the pulsepoint of a fight beneath his skin. He heals, slowly, upon the fighting mat of Pentecost’s Kwoon and with each traded punch and word of advice, with each murmur of his dead brother’s voice in the back of his head.

He learns to breathe again, lungs filling with air around the tight knot of hurt and grief buried in his chest since they pulled him from the wreckage of their Jaeger. He learns how to _live_.

It’s barely months later that he wakes up to alarms blaring and runs down to control to see one of the New Zealand Jaegers are dragged by a kaiju down toward the breach. People around him are hushed with horror, whispering between themselves of sending another jaeger down after them, because the pilots are so young and they’re still _alive_. It’s a suicide mission, he knows, because nobody’s managed to make it down there and back up alive -- either the Jaeger cracks under the damage and water pressure or the kaiju manages to finish them off. 

So by the time the room falls silent in grief it feels like it’s been ages. Time ticks by like the count down of a bomb, a steady pressure that has the room rocking with tension. By the time there’s a crest of water and two battered rescue pods pop up out of the water, Kili had hardened his heart to the incoming death report. Around him, people are cheering, sobbing in relief that the pilots made it, someone starts chanting _Southern Star_ and the name sticks with him, even as one pilot throws off the lid of the pop and swims to the other.

The unmoving one.

There’s still noise around him, but Kili’s world has peeled down to a pinpoint, gaze focused on the the way the camera zooms in, on the desperation on that young face -- _Merry_ , he remembers suddenly, and the one in the pod is his cousin, Pip or something. They’d worked together once, off the coast not too far from Raglan. _God_ but they were so young. Merry’s mouth is open in a scream, slip sliding through words Kili can’t hear but the meaning of which he _knows_ deep in the marrow of his bones.

(Ice and dark and pain -- the loss like he’s never felt before, like one half of him had been cleaved clear away.)

When he blinks, there’s a limp body in Merry’s arms and the entire room is quiet, a loose circle cleared unconsciously around him.

\--

The silence permeates the entire Dome for days, thick and heavy and overbearing. If Kili hadn’t gone at least partially crazy when Fili died in his mind, he certainly would have now. Whispered comfort ebbs at the back of his mind, golden and warm and ghost like -- because it’s owner _is_ nothing more than a ghost.

It helps, but only marginally. The guilt too heavy to bear.

Kili shrugs his shoulders and flips a trainee, wonders if this one will die in the blue too. Merry’s keening grief flashes through his mind, quickens Kili’s breath and sends cold up his spine. He can’t breathe, he can’t see, it’s all cold and haze and the neural load is firing through his nerve endings, spitting fire through his veins -- _Easy, easy, Kili, it’s alright_.

He takes a breath, moves up to meet his next match without pause or reservation. All thoughts of Merry and Pippin and Fili merges into a white silence, blank and quiet and focused only on the sound of bodies falling and the thwack of bō against bō.

God but he wishes Fili had been the one to survive, he would have known what to do.

\--

Kili doesn’t quite forget, but Merry fades into the back of his mind as kaiju start killing more pilots, getting smarter and tougher. He still can’t get in the Conn with anybody -- the last time they tried he nearly fried the pilot’s brain, left him screaming and bleeding from the nose at the memory of neural overload and death of a co-pilot -- but Kili is strong and he is smart, he trains prospective candidates and helps out engineers, anything to feel useful and complete.

Fili’s voice doesn’t fade from the back of his mind, but neither does it grow stronger and some days that’s the only thing that gets him through. He tells nobody, lets them form their own conclusions even as the golden voice of his brother ebbs at the back of his mind, ghost fingers trailing insubstantially over the nape of his neck soothingly.

Kili lives, and that is more than he can say for most of the dwindling rangers. He doesn’t like to think about it, but none outlive their partners, not completely. Being permanently hooked up to machines didn’t really count in the end, not in his book. But that’s okay, that’s alright -- he doesn’t envy them the fact that they don’t have to live this lie of a life, half formed and incomplete. Sometimes he wishes he could just take that one step off the Jaeger platform and _fall_ , sometimes he wishes the kaiju would track them down and destroy them all.

Sometimes he wishes he never woke up at all.

But Kili wasn’t given that _luxury_ and the bits that are Fili spark with panic every time his mind wanders down darker paths. Those days he works twice as hard, muscles aching as he trains his cadets, voice sharp and commanding like his Uncle’s voice once was. The ache of Fili’s loss never quite leaves, just scabs over and bleeds when something happens to reopen the wound. He busies himself, and these days that’s not hard to do with rangers falling seemingly everyday. 

With things as they are, it isn’t a surprise the program starts drawing together, sharing engineers and trainers between shatterdomes even as the amount of trainees and viable jaegers drop. And there are too many memories for him here, so Kili goes with the wind, stops in dome after dome, fixes jaegers and helps with students, tries to ignore the whispers and the respectful berth he’s always given, fights when scornful comments hit too close to home.

He loses track of days and months and places, everything blurring together until one day Kili wakes up and realizes he’s in New Zealand and the past months slam into him like a fist to the gut. Suddenly he remembers the tiny grainy picture of a ranger holding his cousin’s limp form, mouth open wide in a scream and Kili wonders how he could have ever forgotten, how he could have left the only other ranger he knows who was cleaved in half like he was to deal with it on his own. He resolves to fix that, to find Merry and offer comfort -- but shame burns in Kili’s veins, holds him fast to his own people even if his gaze scans for curls and a faintly familiar face among crowds at the dome.

Later, people will say it is Kili who sought out the younger man, but they’d be wrong.

In the end, Kili is training a young pup of a boy, big and stocky but so young it _hurts_. When he falls, the ground trembles beneath their feet but he laughs as he accepts Kili’s hand up, claps him on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, she’ll be right.” And the crowd shivers with laughter, because Kili barely meets this kid’s shoulder and he’s still coming out on top. It’s still hard for Kili to laugh like he used to, even years after his brother’s death, but now he laughs, head tossed back, hair falling out of his ponytail to cling to his sweat-slicked neck and face.

It startles the cadets, he can tell, but there’s too much mischief in his dark eyes when he waves a hand.

“Alright you lot, get on outta here I don’t want to see your miserable faces ‘till tomorrow at least!”

He turns to clean up, mopping up sweat and picking up any bit of trash or discarded bō left lying around. The sound of footfalls gradually drifts and falls away, leaving him in silence, and Kili really can’t be blamed he doesn’t realize there’s someone else there until they clear their throat.

There’s a huff of laughter, smile wry upon his face as he turns, “Sorry boss, didn’t see you there--” 

And Kili pauses, blinks, because that’s not the Marshall but rather a short man with a riotous head of curls, and a crooked smile upon his lips as he takes in Kili’s dumbfounded look. Somehow this seems like fate settling into place, feels like there was never any chance they wouldn’t ever meet again anyway and how could he have thought otherwise?

So Kili lets his hands drop to his side, footsteps near silent as he steps closer to where Merry leans against the wall. It’s a bit awkward, silent, and Kili takes it upon himself to shrug his shoulders and thumb at the hemline of his trousers in a bit of a nervous habit.

“Hey, ah, fancy seeing you here?” 

And when Merry snorts with laughter Kili thinks it’s alright, thinks he’s forgiven for hiding.

\--

They fit together like puzzle pieces, combined experiences and the similar personalities meshing until it’s like drifting without actually getting in each other’s head. 

Where one goes, the other follows, to Sydney to Los Angeles to Vladivostok, building each other up and patching up the holes in their mind even as they train new cadets. It becomes a common sight to see them side by side, shoulders leaning against each other as they duck heads and excitedly chatter. Once, Merry makes Kili laugh so hard he flails and falls off the bench at the table they were sitting on. The silence and sheer startled look on his face has Merry laughing so hard he follows -- and nobody can quite stop their own laughter as the both of them tussle to get untangled even if they’re laughing too hard to accomplish much.

It’s little things like this that convince the higher-ups that maybe two worn out pilots might be okay to drift together, might be more than compatible and the still steady loss of Jaegers makes it seem like a viable option. 

So they learn each other, learn how they fight and how they react, and it isn’t too hard since it had been happening _anyway_. But now there’s a thick thread of duty hanging about them, a sick curl of anticipation and hope and fear that they can both sense within the other.

It doesn’t stop the anxiety from churning up in Kili’s belly when _Mithril True_ arrives looking good as new and beautiful in her new home. He chooses to interpret the tumultuous feeling in his veins as _hope_ but it’s been so long that Kili no longer knows what that feels like.

He feels a hand at his elbow, meets a similarly conflicted look in Merry’s gaze and smiles.

“Ready?”

“Y’know it.”

\--

_Mithril_ runs like a dream beneath his feet, pulses under his skin like everything he’s ever wanted and needed all in one bright shining moment. 

It’s like coming home, and for a moment Kili loses himself in it, loses himself in the blue of the drift, in the warmth that is Merry lingering in the back of his mind, pressing the jagged edges of their psyches together until they line up and slot together as one.

For one bright, shining moment Kili thinks _yes, we can do this_ and the move together well, grin across the conn as euphoria slips across their bond, drips into their veins like the taste of ambrosia upon tongues. Kili feels whole, complete, and the drift lets him know Merry does too -- feels like _himself_ again.

But it’s not quite right, it’s almost unreal. There’s no Fili with his steady warmth, no Pippin with ill timed jokes and laughter like the bubble of champagne. The both of them are too jaded for it, too _wrong_ to be the person the other needs. It’s frustrating, they _work_ , they really do, but there’s something just infinitesimally small and off that makes the drift settle uncomfortably on their shoulders. They’re looking for someone else in the drift, someone more -- and neither of them can be that person for the other. It’s like ghosts are getting in the way of something that should be good and true.

The drift starts to crumble around them, shattering like the veil being pulled away from their eyes and the Kili screams as he feels metal punch through his gut, feels the burn of bearing the brunt of _Southern Star_ ’s neural load frying his synapses. Fili roars, pain coloring that golden voice, even as Pippin cries and thrashes, voice reedy and _young_ as he rips his throat up with his agony.

In the back of his mind, he hears Merry’s screams reach a crescendo right next to him and

they

both

 

fall

 

into 

 

the _blue_

 

\--

Later on, after LOCCENT pulls the plug on _Mithril_ and they tear off their suits, scrub their skin until it’s red and raw as if it would rid themselves of memory, they pile into one bed. It takes a second to figure out, limbs tangling for a brief moment as the both of them try to figure out two pairs rather than one -- but it’s a momentary thing, eases out on the exhale. Kili presses his face to Merry’s neck, relaxes around the fingers running through his hair and the gentle slope of cheek resting at the crown of his head.

Drifting together was terrible and wonderful, it’s true, like the beauty of Alaska in the dead of winter. But mostly it had been like being flayed alive, like having all their thoughts plucked from their heads and sewn together under their skin. It was Fili and Pippin and Kili and Merry, screaming and crying and four people in one form, all meshed together like nobody should be.

The memory of bearing the full brunt of a Jaeger’s neural load aches beneath his skin, and Kili can’t help but wish he’d never had to put Merry through that. But he can’t regret this, the camaraderie that comes with being in another person’s head, of knowing how they feel and how they think and knowing it for yourself. 

He can not regret it, but Kili does not think he can do it again. And as their arms wind tighter around each other, Kili knows Merry agrees with him.

It’s just too much for the both of them. For the _four_ of them because there isn’t just MerryandPip or FiliandKili, it isn’t just MerryandKili, it’s all of them, melding and meshing until there’s some strange algorithm of four rangers in one recommissioned Jaeger.

Kili doesn’t get much sleep that night, and when he finally does fall asleep it’s to the steady thump of Merry’s heart against his sternum and the warmth of his breath against his hair, the reassurance that they both still live a heady thing after so much loss.

\--

They don’t drift again for months, _Mithril True_ standing silent and cold like a sentinel among the other Jaegers in the bay. It’s almost foreboding, seeing his beloved Jaeger standing there silent like a grave, but Kili knows she’s not really his any more, not Merry’s either, even if he only stepped foot in her for a handful of minutes.

Soon, within months, maybe a year or two, she’ll have new pilots and they’ll be forgotten. Lost to the sea that is time and politics. Kili’s never had a taste for it, that was always something Fili handled better -- but it still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth to think of _his_ Jaeger going to some rookies.

But maybe that’s better than the oblivion bay where she would have mouldered away and fallen apart like _Mithril True_ was nothing but a sink of money. Like she hadn’t killed Kaiju after Kaiju under his hands, like his brother’s blood hadn’t stained the floor of her conn pod, like they hadn’t practically grown up with her.

It’s sickening, and Kili can barely handle the knowledge that she will be out of his hands soon -- practically already is.

So maybe it’s lucky then that the next time a Kaiju erupts from the breach that most rangers are off on tour or just plain out of range. Maybe it’s luck that Dezhnyov broke his leg mere days before in a bad training accident, maybe it’s luck that _Legend Gold_ falls in battle.

Maybe, but Kili doesn’t really care. He just suits up and catches Merry’s hand in his, pulls him into a tight hug because this is going to _hurt_. They don’t need words, not really, but Kili’s always dealt with nerves by running his mouth and so he clasps Merry’s shoulder for a second and laughs at the disgruntled techs’ faces as they try to suit them up.

“We get out of this alive Merry and we’re goin’ to snitch some vodka and get drunk off our asses tonight!” A smile, bright with the adrenaline starting to slip into his veins, “Alright?”

Merry just laughed, back straight as they drilled the spinal plate into place. “You better watch yourself Kili, I can drink you under a table.”

“Yeah, yeah, keep telling yourself that, kiddo.”

\--

In the end, they go out there among the dark and the roar of a Kaiju, and it’s like familiarity takes hold of them. It’s painful, mentally and physically, and the drift screams around them, has blood dripping from noses as the mental strain gets to be too much.

But they win, they rip one arm clean off of the writhing Kaiju’s body, press their plasma cannon to a heaving chest and watch it shudder and collapse in a spray of neon blue blood and gore. 

Victory tastes like copper upon their tongue, thick and heady and edged with the burn of alcohol as they laugh and toast each other and everyone else, living or dead. It would be solemn, because the pilots of _Legend Gold_ drowned in that sea they just triumphed in, but living in this war against monsters means you take every victory you can. 

So Kili pours Merry another shot and presses laughter into the line of his shoulder when he stumbles and knocks it back, smile wide enough to bare teeth.

In the back of his mind Fili murmurs praise, murmurs comfort and love and it’s still agony, Kili still feels as if he’s missing pieces of himself. But Merry’s there now, soothing the edges of their minds together and duct taping it down to hold fast against the strain of their second and last run in _Mithril True_.

Later they’ll have to stand up in front of the Marshall and the politicians who call for them to do it again and say _no_. But for now there’s shots of vodka and alcohol that tastes like someone brewed it in a bathtub and the comfort of a drift fading from the back of his mind.

And somehow that doesn’t seem half bad.


End file.
